Buyers or Sellers?

With last night’s enormous win over the Washington Capitals, the Blues head into the Olympic break with one big question looming in many fans’ minds. Will this team be active at the trade deadline which is on March 3rd? If they are active, will they be buyers or sellers? Last night’s win pushed the team to 65 points and just four points removed from 8th place in the Western Conference.

Four points is a big step in the right direction, but one must keep in mind that Anaheim, Detroit, Dallas and Calgary all lay between the Blues and their playoff goal. The mark of four points isn’t too intimidating, but having to leap over multiple teams will not be a light task.

Back to the original question at hand, the outcome of whether the Blues are buyers or sellers shifted with the wins over Toronto and Washington, but still might rely on the outcome of their contest against Phoenix on March 2nd.

In my opinion, if the two wins would have been losses, the Blues would be sellers by the deadline and we likely would see several players “rented” by contending clubs. Instead (thankfully) we saw two wins, which shifted things back over to the buying side. I have every reason to believe JD will compete to the finish and is more motivated than ever before this season. Following the Blues’ shootout win, we saw him extremely excited by the result and had the look of a man who will do what it takes to get this team into the postseason. Ilya Kovalchuk might have slipped through and landed with the New Jersey Devils, but there are numerous players still out there that could help this team.

So what could the Blues buy and should they give up on certain young players to make a deal? Obviously offense has been a glaring issue this season but at what cost is acceptable to improve it? Clearly, there’s more speculation than answers at this stage but it is all food for thought/discussion.

Take a guy like Patrik Berglund. He has been playing the best he has all season of late, and let’s not be too quick to forget just what he did last year. You never want to quit too early on young talent just to see it come back and haunt you in the form of a competitor.

Lots of scenarios could play out before the deadline, but for now we will just have to sit back and cheer for our guys like David Backes (pictured above) as he competes in the Olympics.